I'm sorry. Are you suggesting that he look at the demos that caused the problem in the first place? Developer help is there to augment learning to program. And who are you to say he won't come up with a very good issue while he has been blocked. You're pretty much trying to pull up a flower that looks like it won't bloom. And this isn't just for Whybe, it's for everyone. Why should someone be stopped from posting just because a mod thinks they've posted too many "wrong questions"?

I'm questioning whether or not it would be "okay" to deny someone the chance for it to BE an option though. Today the guy can't find the reference, but he might find it in two weeks. And in your image, he did ask for a programming teacher, no one responded. I've worked with him on a personal level. He has a fascination for programming, he just can't fathom computational logic. Until someone can find a way to get him to read the reference that isn't just telling him to read it, he will never learn.

This is supposed to be a programming community that nurtures people trying to learn. Don't tell me he's not trying.

Perhaps it'll be more useful to have a logical, short post at the top of developer help (stickied) that could give a 12 year old an intro to how to LEARN to program and not just jump right in to the actual learning.

Until someone can find a way to get him to read the reference that isn't just telling him to read it, he will never learn.

I agree. But there's really not 'fun' incentive to following a tutorial or reading the guide. The most common complaint is 'there's too much to read.' - Yeah. There's a lot. Read a bit of it, practice what it told you to do, then read a bit more. Learn as you go.

The Reference, under Developer->Reference on the website or F1 in Dream Maker is absolutely not a book you should read all of. Good God, no.
Search for information pertinent to what you're doing. If you're trying to make something move, look up "move" or "walk" or "location."

Everyone can learn to program, even if you're in a completely different field such as Designer or Graphics/Sound.

No not everyone can learn to program. I know. That sucks. But it's true; some people just aren't prepared or don't understand that it's not as simple as sitting down, writing code and asking when you get stuck. There's logical or mathematical stuff you have to understand and read about first. And some of it? Yeah. It's dull. But so is practising anything repetitive and initially unfulfilling.
If you're a graphics or sound guy, then you're going to want a programmer. You solutions here are either "Hire one," or "Get a friend who wants to learn."
Being a 'designer' or an 'ideas guy' isn't really a technical role. There's being a project manager, but that is a technical title that is not the same as just being an 'owner' or coming up with neat ideas. A Project Manager's job is to co-ordinate the staff, find out what they need and then get it for them. To make sure they can all work in the best environment possible, and to make sure requirements are realistic and practical. To work out which 'core features' are absolutely vital to the first release, or the next update. Not to swamp them with so many ideas that work never ends.

I can't even list them on the HUB anymore.

Not without someone on your team a membership, no. But you don't need to. Get a website, or a facebook page, or a twitter account. Use social media. You're allowed to post about your games in Off Topic. Link people to promotional material. It's your job to sell your game and 'real languages' don't offer free advertising services. That's what a hub is, an advertising service.

I'm not the person to address BYOND's growth or decline since 2000, or whether or how the average age of users has fluctuated. I will say that there are always going to be people grumbling about the platform and talking about other languages, though. We've had C/C++, Flash, Java, and now Unity is the big thing. If someone wants to learn a 'real' language, good on them - best of luck with whatever it is they chose to go study.

Byond is a community for Pre-teens and Teenagers to steal other peoples material and for older generations to abuse the younger ones.

BYOND is a community with no particular arbitrary entry-age requirement. There are younger members who've picked up a useful skill and busied themselves making something, and older members who still haven't. The reverse is also true. Is it all about theft? I'd probably have to disagree. with you at a pretty fundamental level. Are there a lot of cloned/copied games? Sure. We do what we can to clean them up. Though obviously this makes a certain demographic of the site unhappy, it's the path Tom has chosen, and I think the moderators and original game developers are all generally in agreement with it.

My experience here hasn't been the greatest, abusive people in the community and in more recent years, abusive people in moderating positions.

This will be true of any community. By nature, a level of anonymity and detachment from society will encourage the abrasive side of people to come out. From a moderation point of view - who? Why?

It really is too difficult to setup a team and make a game.

This depends what you're willing to offer to other people in order to entice them to contribute. I know I keep spouting it like a broken record, but you have to compensate skilled workers for their time competitively. If you don't want skilled workers ... you're down to friends who have a lot of hunger for learning and willpower. Making a working, successful game isn't easy, or everyone would do it.

Sorry but telling people "x does x now write it like x" doesn't help someone who doesn't even know what x is, how x works, or what the snippet for x even is to begin with.

You're right. Technical answers to technical questions won't help non-technical people. But unless those people become technical, they'll never get any better. If you don't understand an answer, go and research it. Learn more about anything they've Capitalised, or look up Functions() in the Reference. Google or Wikipedia are your friends; if someone names something that sounds like a Technical Term, look it up and see if you can learn about it. Page the person who said it a summary of what you think it is, and ask if they can explain it to you. Come to Chatters and ask me, if you like.

Go to pixel art or graphic design communities and browse their learning material.
Developer Help is like the reference, in a way. You can query the community's combined knowledge, but it can't tell you how to write your game, just why a specific bit isn't working.

If you think that saying "Do X in Y way" is bad, think about who's saying it and why they might be saying it. Quite a few of the people who post replies to technical questions have industry experience of some kind, or academic experience.
They'll be approaching with a level of understanding the newcoming programmer, artist or whatever hasn't got. Sure, you don't have to take their word as law, but they'll have told you to do something a certain for for a good reason. If your choice is your own unsure programming or their experienced programming, just take theirs, and study it once you have it using the materials available to you.

Most people come onto the forums and ask for help because they are working on their game and don't have time to sit and figure out some inane problem that lies within the bad programming they are forced to use

Nobody is forcing them to use it. Remember: If you want help with your game, it is your game and your responsibility. You have chosen to make it, so it's your hard work here. That 'inane problem' is of the programmer's own making, and so it is absolutely in the programmer or project leader's interest to work out how to fix it. This means that in future, you will know how to fix more types of problem.

I get it. It's unfair that nobody can come with a magic bullet and 'teach you to program' or 'tutor you.' But the people who program -now- never had that either. The reason they weren't answering questions 4 years ago is because they didn't know how to program back then either. They had to learn, and it was damned hard work something.

I posted a similar thing to what Lugia linked to, only without the open statement I'd ban him, instead just encouraging him and recommending some things to learn from, and he deleted it, Oasis, so...

And when I locked his topic and asked him more firmly, he paged me somewhat abusively. It was difficult to converse with him using any medium. So ... yeah. I did the best I could to sideline him back towards the guides and independent study.

Edit: I will say, he did become markedly more open to talking to me after I just let him vent his frustration for a bit, and I tried to give him a bit of a pep-talk regards learning to program.

It's a mixture of working out how to get people to post solutions to the logic problems, but not the code, and learning materials, rather than just doing it for the poster, along with how to get the posters to stop asking for code instead of 'help.'
I'm still working out a strategy for actually 'making it happen.'

I'm of the opinion that unless someone goes to the extreme in their posts (in terms of language, racism, deliberate spam, etc.) then they shouldn't be prevented from posting. If anything, mod preview (does BYOND have that) rather than straight up blocking posts. But I wouldn't mind seeing that learn to learn to program thread I mentioned. Would anyone volunteer to write it up?

I'd suggesting, having re-read this the following day, that the initial post kind of misrepresents the reason the post got locked and the OP got asked to take a break from posting.

It wasn't because it was 'taking up space' at all. It was because;

Currently, you've submitted 13 Dev Help requests for answers to very simple logic problems in a month; you could have avoided all or most of these by simply following one of the many guides available.

After 13 requests for very simple features like 'How do I put an item in the game' or 'how do I drop something?' which are fundamentals explained in any of the multiple guides available, there was a certain unwillingness to do his part being shown. It's totally useless to him and totally unproductive for the people replying if a poster never learns anything. Developer Help is not Classified Ads, and using it as such is the same as misusing any board.

In my opinion it should be the members who post programmed answers people can copy and paste without or with little explanation who's posting rights should be revoked temporarily.

I agree that this is unhelpful, but banning those people really isn't the answer unless they fundamentally refuse to change their behaviour after having it explained to them and asking (like the guy I told to stop posting did.)
If we start banning people for 'helping,' there will, frankly, be an entire avalanche of complaints. It's not something I'm prepared to start doing.

While questions like those might seem stupidly simple, there's often no way the person could have known to do what you're suggesting they should do. If they have some code and don't know what's wrong with it, they don't know what they're doing wrong and don't know what to look up in the reference. If they don't know what var/proc they need to use, they again don't know what to look for in the reference (or what to search for on the forum). When someone asks a question like that, just link them to a forum search, another forum post with a similar question, or a DM reference page.

If you don't have the patience to deal with people, don't deal with them. Let someone who has patience politely answer their question.

If you don't want BYOND to be inundated with people asking stupid questions it's even more important to be pleasant (it'd also help to poke the BYOND staff every now and then so that some day they'll start to take an active role in making BYOND appeal to better game developers). If a decent user came along and saw people being rude to kids asking simple questions, they'd almost certainly be scared off.

Deathguard wrote:

It is not our responsibility to make other people use the Search function, it is their own. Nor is it our responsibility to hand-hold them through the available learning material.

This isn't a responsibility that you must have but it's one that many people voluntarily accept. You can't assume that every user is aware of every resource and everything contained in those resources (just because you're aware of the resources doesn't mean everyone else is). It's a completely legitimate question to ask something that's explained in a resource. People have to become aware of these resources somehow. The easiest way should be to ask the community. If you don't want to answer these questions you don't have to, but don't discourage them either.

Which is why I feel that directing punishment onto the people that are basically taking the position of a forum/guide search isn't what is going to fix this problem.